Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee

Meeting date: Tuesday, January 10, 2023

Official Report 578KB pdf

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Commissioner for Ethical Standards in Public Life in Scotland Annual Report and Accounts 2021-22

The third item on our agenda is to take evidence on the Commissioner for Ethical Standards in Public Life in Scotland’s annual report for 2021-22. We are joined by the acting commissioner, Ian Bruce, who is accompanied by Angela Glen, the senior investigating officer, and Karen Elder, the head of corporate services and accountable officer. I welcome our witnesses to the meeting and invite Ian Bruce to make a short opening statement.

Thank you, convener and members of the committee, for the invitation and the opportunity to talk to you about the work of our office. I wilI keep this brief, because I have no doubt that the committee will have a number of questions for me and my colleagues.

We are here to provide more detail about our work on complaint handling and on our governance arrangements. My colleagues will be able to assist with some of the detail about those issues. We are keen to ensure that the committee is fully informed about our performance, and we are happy to answer questions today as well as to provide follow-up supplementary information. We will do whatever the committee would find helpful.

I trust that members have reviewed the last two annual reports and that they have given them a flavour of the challenges that our organisation has faced since I took office as acting commissioner almost two years ago. I do not plan to rehearse all those challenges, but we will be happy to respond to any questions that members may have about them. I felt that it might be more helpful at this point briefly to bring the committee up to speed on the current circumstances and our plans for the future.

Audit Scotland will lay another section 22 report in January to follow up on the progress that we have made in the usual way. We anticipate that that will reflect positively on the work that we have done to rebuild our office and the services that we provide, and to restore confidence in the ethical standards framework. However, we also expect it to reflect the fact that more work still has to be done to embed the good practices that we have adopted since the previous section 22 report was laid by the Auditor General for Scotland.

On the progress that we have made, we have included all the details of that on our website and in summary in our annual report. In brief, we have fully implemented 11 of our auditor’s recommendations and partially implemented the remainder that we were able to implement—we can provide more detail on all that during this meeting. We have concentrated on re-establishing our governance, our systems of assurance, our relationships with stakeholders, and our staffing levels. I think that that gives us a firm footing for the future.

On my plans for the immediate future, as Lorna Johnston, the executive director of the Standards Commission, said, I intend to complete additional recruitment, followed by induction, so that we can clear our investigations backlog and, just as important, process complaints much more quickly in future than the office has ever done in the past. I also plan to introduce a communications strategy and develop and measure progress against key performance indicators for our office. We will publish all that, given our commitment to openness and transparency.

I trust that that was of interest to the committee, convener. I and my colleagues will be happy to answer any questions that you and other members have.

Thank you very much, Ian. Those were useful opening remarks.

I have a few questions before I bring in colleagues. It is interesting to note that there has been an increase in complaints about councillors since 2015. Are you satisfied that the current standards system is doing enough to ensure ethical standards in public office and deter bad behaviour?

It is fair to say that there is a very mixed picture. I will bring in Ms Glen to give you some of the detail, but I can say in general terms that we have seen a steady rise in complaints about conduct, specifically in relation to courtesy and respect.

Having said that, there has been a decrease in complaints received in this financial year—we can give you the figures. It is not entirely clear to us whether we are looking at a blip or a downward trend. We have undertaken to conduct research into the area, once we have the capacity for that. We would like to do a deep dive into our statistics, going back several years, to try to gain a proper understanding—not just for ourselves but for the committee, the Standards Commission, councils and others who have an interest in the topic—of what is causing complaint numbers to rise or fall.

Good morning, committee members. I will add to what the acting commissioner said.

Cases that relate to councillors and members form the bulk of our day-to-day work on complaints. I can give you a snapshot of the most recent trends. In 2021-22, there were 164 cases, whereas in the current financial year we are looking at about 79 cases. We have been here before: in 2017-18, there were 80 cases in total, so a lower number of cases has occurred before. We plan to conduct research to understand the reasons for the current downward trend and why complaint volumes fluctuate.

As Ms Johnston said, a high proportion of the complaints that we get relate to conduct—in particular, the conduct of councillors in social media, which is very visible. The framework of additional training for councillors, to make them aware that they can be readily perceived to be councillors even when they are using social media, will always be beneficial.

Is additional training in the works, to make clear to councillors that, when they are on social media, they are still being perceived as being in that role, whatever the conversation?

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Lorna Johnston and her team have already rolled out training of that nature, and the revised code is much clearer than the previous version about that. However, to be honest, it is a difficult area. Social media being what it is, people have a mix of private and public accounts, and the lines between those sometimes become very blurred. Alongside the Standards Commission, we will need to continue to have a dialogue with councils to help councillors to understand that, on occasion, they might think that they are operating an account that has nothing to do with their political activities but, because they are commenting on political matters and so on, they are perceived as a councillor. In fairness, that is probably work in progress.

I will broaden out the discussion. It is interesting to hear that the number of complaints is going down. Obviously, there was an election in 2022, which brought in a lot of new councillors. I would be interested in hearing about what work the ethical standards commissioner’s office has done with new councillors to ensure that they understand what is acceptable and what is unacceptable in relation to bad behaviour in public office.

I reiterate the point that Ms Johnston made: there is a separation of roles. However, we happily assist the Standards Commission by going to the workshops that it or others such as SOLAR set up to demonstrate that we have a united front and a shared understanding of what the codes require. It is the Standards Commission’s role to provide guidance, training and support, and our primary role is to investigate complaints. We report to the Standards Commission on the outcomes of all our investigations, and it is at that point that people will gain an understanding of whether the conduct that we have investigated represents a breach of the code. That is a decision for the Standards Commission to make.

In effect, your work can become a case study.

Precisely. That is a very good point.

You still get a large number of complaints that are either not pursued or investigated and not upheld. Could you give a flavour of why you deal with so many complaints that are not taken further forward? Is there a lack of understanding among the public about what they can and cannot, or should and should not, complain about in relation to the behaviour of local members?

That is a good and very interesting question. Far and away the majority of the complaints that we receive are deemed to be inadmissible at stage 1. To be simplistic about it, we have a two-stage process, and stage 1 relates to admissibility. We look at the conduct that has been complained about and take a view on whether the code applies to it.

I will give a couple of simple examples. Some constituents might be unhappy that a councillor is not responding to emails, or not responding as quickly as they would like them to, or they might like a councillor to take a particular approach to a local issue, but the councillor is not taking that approach. The constituents cast around for someone to complain to and, given that we have a website and a complaint form that is easy for people to complete, they land on us, so we receive complaints of that nature. Such complaints are not admissible. Again, to be simplistic about it, the code of conduct is about the ethical conduct of councillors; it is not about whether they are fulfilling their role in the way in which one or two disgruntled constituents feel that they should. A lot of complaints get ruled out on that basis, simply because the code does not apply to them.

As we have already said, a lot of the more nuanced cases that we investigate relate to discourtesy and disrespect. We get quite a lot of those cases, because people say things online that one or two members of the public find objectionable. However, the fact that a particular member of the public finds it objectionable does not necessarily mean that the person has been disrespectful.

Again, I will give a concrete example. Quite polarised political debates are going on in the country. As a constituent, I might disagree with a councillor’s position on the side of a particular political debate, but the fact that I disagree with them does not necessarily mean that what that councillor has said online is inherently disrespectful. However, we would need to investigate that to establish whether that is the case, and some cases can be a wee bit borderline.

The other thing that we need to take account of, which is not on the face of the code—again, Ms Johnston mentioned this—is people’s right to freedom of political expression in article 10.2 of the European convention on human rights. Sometimes people will say something that people find objectionable and, on the face of it, it could appear to be discourteous or disrespectful. However, there is enhanced protection for politicians by virtue of that convention right, so there are occasions when we determine that that right is applicable and that, as a consequence, a breach of the code cannot be found.

In closing down a complaint, do you inform the complainer about the decision that you have taken, why you have reached that decision and that the issue that they are complaining about is not within the scope of the work that you do?

Yes, and we plan to go further than we have gone previously by providing full reports. Complainers receive written decisions, and I provide reasons for my decisions. That happens in relation to all my work, but we are planning to go further on that. Perhaps I can ask Angela Glen to give a bit more detail.

Yes, certainly. At the end of the stage 1 process—which is informed by the 2000 act and the eligibility direction of the Standards Commission and in which we assess the complaint against all of our admissibility criteria—if we consider that the complaint cannot proceed to a stage 2 investigation, we draft a decision letter, which is shared with the complainer. In the very near future, we will be sharing a copy of that letter with the respondent, too, to inform them that we received the complaint and of the reasoning why it was not taken forward to a stage 2 investigation.

That is good. Now, I really have to ask you about the 2019 to 2021 period, when the number of complaints that were not taken forward was excessively high. The figure was more than 80 per cent, and that possibly gave rise to the Audit Scotland section 22 report that we all know about. Will you tell us, as far as you can, why the percentage was so high during that period, and could you also give the committee some sense of why the complaints that were made during that period cannot be reinvestigated?

Sure. That is a challenging question, to be honest. The decisions at that time were taken by my immediate predecessor, and I think that that is also relevant to your follow-up question. She was the commissioner, and she was exercising her judgment as she saw it at the time. That meant that a number of complaints were dismissed early and a number of complaints were investigated but no breach was found. That is just the reality.

Again, Ms Glen will be able to give you the figures, but we have now returned to investigation and admissibility rates being pretty much comparable with those during the tenures of prior commissioners. When we get a new commissioner in post, they are the statutory office holder and they conduct the role in the way in which they see fit. That is just the reality once someone is appointed to a post of that nature.

I understand that some people are disgruntled that their case was not investigated or that there was not found to be a breach of the code following an investigation. They have been in touch with the office to discuss those things with me, and I have been very open with them about what I am and am not able to do.

The committee will be aware from the section 22 report that there was a recommendation that all the complaints from the period from the August prior to my immediate predecessor departing up to March, when she went on leave, should be independently looked at again. We felt that we needed to take legal advice on that recommendation, and we did so. We have been happy to share that legal advice with the SPCB and our auditors in order to explain why we could not take forward that suggestion. I would be happy to share that advice, in confidence, with the committee—I have been very open about this.

The legal advice was unequivocal and was to the effect that—except in narrow circumstances—it would be unlawful for me to reinvestigate complaints on which another commissioner had already reached a decision. The legal principle involved is functus officio. I do not want to get into Latin here, so it might be helpful if I suggest an equivalent term. You will be familiar with the concept of double jeopardy, which basically means that a person cannot be brought before the court for potential conviction for the same crime twice, except in narrow circumstances. The narrow circumstances in which I could revisit a complaint would involve situations in which there had been a fundamental mistake of fact, there had been fraud or the public authority—in this case, the commissioner—had not completed the investigation. If those circumstances do not apply, I cannot reopen closed cases.

There is a natural justice aspect to that. We can look at it from the other side. People against whom complaints were not upheld, and who therefore feel that they had been exonerated, might think it unfair that another commissioner two years down the line can come in and reinvestigate them even though, from their perspective, they had been cleared.

I hope that that helps to explain the situation.

It helps a great deal. Thanks for taking the time to explain the situation in detail.

What recourse is there for a person who feels that their complaint has been inappropriately dismissed at the initial stages? Where do they turn to?

Judicial review is the option that is open to them. Again, to be clear, I and all the staff in the office are receptive to discussions with people to gain a proper understanding of why they might feel that an initial decision that I have made is wrong. During the investigation process, there are several junctures at which they have an opportunity to make their views clear to me, and I am more than happy to listen to them. There have been occasions on which something that has been said to me in that way has led me to draw a different conclusion.

Those were helpful responses. I will bring in Marie McNair, who is joining us online.

Good morning. The committee is keen to continue to explore the possible barriers to people taking up local elected office. Is there any evidence that the complaints system in Scotland is deterring people from standing or standing again for local elected office? What impact does the process have on councillors who are being investigated, and is support in place to help councillors during the process? Is there evidence of vexatious complaints being made and, if so, what more can be done to discourage those?

I think that there are three questions in there, which I will address in turn.

The first question concerns whether the framework in Scotland presents a barrier. I am not sure that it does. If operated properly by all participants, the framework should encourage people into public life, because it encourages good conduct on the part of councillors and board members. To that extent, it should encourage people as opposed to put them off.

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I think that the thing that puts people off relates to conduct. We have already mentioned that there are some quite polarised debates going on in Scotland. There is no issue with that—that is one of the hallmarks of a well-operating democracy. However, the way in which people express themselves sometimes means that some of the debates have been described as “toxic”. That can certainly be off-putting to people.

I do not know whether the committee is aware that the Local Government Association did some research in 2020-21 and produced a report in June of last year that was entitled “Debate Not Hate: The impact of abuse on local democracy”. There were some very interesting findings in it, although it applied to England and Wales, not to Scotland. For example, the findings showed that people were targeted online because of their particular characteristics. Misogyny, homophobia and racism were features. We should certainly all be alive to that if we are concerned about the underreflection of people with protected characteristics in public life. It was also clear from what respondents said that those activities were putting people off standing for election and considering standing for election.

Anecdotally, I know that such things also happen in Scotland, because I receive complaints from councillors who are subjected to some of that conduct. Anecdotally, councillors have said to me that they do not plan to stand again and that they will not be encouraging others to do so because of the treatment that they have had. Again, that should be of concern to all of us, particularly if we are concerned about the diversification of local authorities. I am very passionate about diversification, with my public appointments hat on. It is very important that boards are diverse, and I am sure that the same holds true for councils in order that they can fulfil their roles as well as they possibly can. There are therefore issues in that regard.

Marie McNair also asked about vexatious complaints, which do come up. Again, I see the personal impact of those on councillors. I will give another concrete example. A neighbour of a councillor submitted a complaint to us alleging a contravention of the code, but that was fundamentally about weaponising the code—for want of a better expression—because of a neighbourhood dispute. It had nothing to do with the councillor acting in that capacity. I will not say that that happens particularly frequently, but it does happen.

Of course, occasionally, complaints are politically motivated. We sometimes see tit-for-tat complaints when local political parties are in dispute and use the code in order to gain some sort of leverage over others.

As an ex-councillor, I can tell you how toxic council chambers can be at times. The behaviour of some folk is appalling.

Of the 330 complaints that were received about councillors and board members in 2021-22, 99 were complaints about disrespect towards employees or the public. Will you provide more information on that figure and on the definition of “disrespect”? What percentage of complaints relates to interactions on social media?

I do not know whether Angela Glen will be able to help with the breakdown. It might be that we do not have a full breakdown for the committee today, but we can certainly get one for you.

In answer to the question about what constitutes “disrespect”, we always refer to the Standards Commission’s guidance note on that, which is particularly helpful. However, it varies significantly, which is perhaps the reason why people come forward with complaints of that nature more frequently than they do with complaints of any other nature. Whether somebody has treated somebody with courtesy and respect is quite a broad concept in comparison with, for example, declaration of interests. People, including members of the public, can much more readily understand what that means, which is possibly one of the reasons why we get more complaints of that nature. However, disrespect can mean a number of different things, and we always look at the particular circumstances. We look at the advice notes and we make a determination thereafter about whether the code is engaged.

Bullying and harassment are probably easier to define but, again, there is a very full advice note on what constitutes bullying and harassment. We also use all the Standards Commission’s decisions on whether there has been a breach as precedents for our decision making when we review cases, and our reports refer to prior decisions to help people to understand why we have reached the conclusion that we have reached.

I am particularly concerned by the number of complaints made by staff, although, to be honest, it is much lower than the number of complaints made by members of the public and councillors. That is the pecking order: members of the public, then councillors, and then the number of complaints from staff members is much lower. However, I am open to having discussions with council officers. They get in touch with the office, and I have made it absolutely clear that, if they want to make a complaint, they can do so. They do not take that lightly, because it can be career damaging to make a complaint as a senior council officer. However, I make it clear that, if they come to us with a complaint of that nature, it will be properly investigated, and I have absolutely committed to doing that.

I asked about the percentage of complaints that relate to interactions on social media. If you do not have that figure to hand, can you forward it to the committee? That would be helpful.

By all means, we will do that analysis for you.

That would be useful. Social media seems to be an area that is causing problems.

Good afternoon—or good morning, I should say. It has been a long day, as it is the first day back after the new year.

The ESC website states that the initial review time is nine months. You said in your opening statement that you are carrying out recruitment and induction. Can you give us a bit more information on why you are in this situation? Are the wait times improving? If not, when are we likely to see an improvement? Also, are the wait times resulting in complainants not pursuing complaints?

I know that you have been in the role for only two years but, given that the backlog has existed for several years, do you believe that the commissioner’s office has enough budget and staff to do the job properly?

I will talk in general terms about that and then bring in Angela Glen so that you get some facts and figures.

Where do I start? Let me go back to the past and the question of why we have a backlog. We had significant staff turnover during the tenure of my immediate predecessor. I will tell you how stark it is. None of the investigatory staff who were in post during Bill Thompson’s time—he was the commissioner prior to my immediate predecessor—is in post anymore. That entire investigatory team has been replaced. The commissioner went out and recruited but also lost those staff. Turnover was a perpetual problem for us; it was at 70 or 80 per cent.

Therefore, one of the first things that I had to do was to recruit into vacant posts, and I started work on that as soon as I came into post. That has happened, and we have basically done away with staff turnover. We have a steady, happy and effective workforce. The new investigatory team members had completed their first year by October of last year. I have been monitoring the situation constantly. Turnover was the reason why the backlog built up, because there was nobody to investigate complaints—sadly, it is that straightforward.

I could see that we were getting through the complaints but, equally, it did not look as though we were having any impact on the backlog. Therefore, notwithstanding all the other pressures that the staff were under, I said that we needed to carry out a workforce planning exercise and establish how many people we need to fulfil all our roles as effectively as we would like. That includes not just clearing the backlog but getting better at what we do so that people do not have long waiting times in the future. We did all that. We completed the comprehensive workforce planning exercise last May, and we put in a business bid to the SPCB straight away. Members will know what it is like with recess and the rest of it, but I eventually managed to get some time in front of the SPCB in October, and the case was quickly granted thereafter.

We started recruitment at the end of last year, prior to going on the Christmas break when people have a think about their future. We think that we have made a good offer for people to come to work for a significant public sector organisation that values people and the people who work with it. The closing dates are towards the end of this month, so we will soon have people in post. They will need to be inducted but, once we get them up to speed, we will get them on to the backlog.

We have put lots of other measures in place. You asked about the impact in the interim. We have been monitoring the situation constantly. As a senior management team, we decided that it was only fair to let people know that there is a backlog, so we have said so on our website. Since we put that banner up, we have seen no evidence that the volume of complaints has fallen, which suggests to me that it is not necessarily putting people off.

We felt that we could do lots of other things to bring the backlog down and to investigate more effectively. I will ask Angela Glen to talk about some of the things that she and her team have put in place.

Ian Bruce has covered the majority of the actions that we are taking, but it might be helpful for me to give you a breakdown of how our year is progressing. We began the current financial year in April 2022 with around 60 cases sitting at admissibility stage. Throughout the period of April to October 2022, between 50 and 60 cases were at the assessment stage. At the same time, the number of active on-going investigations per month remained at a very high level compared to similar periods in the past five years. The number of reports that we have issued to the Standards Commission per the outcome direction that Ms Johnston referred to earlier also represents the highest number of reports ever sent through.

Currently, 33 councillor complaint cases are at assessment stage. We are assessing cases that are dated up to June 2022. You will note that that is a significant step towards bringing down the figures from the 60 cases that we had at the beginning of the year to 33 now. That is because of various measures that we have put in place, some of which Ian has mentioned, but I will go into some of the detail on that.

The team actively committed to allocating to itself that number of backlog cases up to June 2022. We are now moving beyond that, despite having a heavy investigation workload. I cannot thank the team enough and I want to say on public record just how proud I am of them, because of the struggle that we have gone through to reach the stage that we are now at.

We are actively keeping to a triage system where cases that are not within our remit and do not match the eligibility direction are dismissed first. Those are part of the letters that I referred to when I answered Mr Coffey’s question. Our triage cases are now up to date, so we do not require to inform complainers that we have not been able to get back to them. That is because the number of cases has gone down through triage, and we will keep that going.

We also preserve evidence. We have an extensive plan to preserve as much evidence as possible to prevent loss through the passage of time as we work through the backlog. That includes requesting and saving webcast meetings, social media, screenshots, which people save to the file, online articles and so on. That all saves time once we have allocated an investigating officer to the case, because they have all the material to hand to complete assessment.

As Ian Bruce mentioned, we have also completed workforce planning, which includes taking into consideration, as a priority, the resources that we need to get through the complaints as quickly as we can. As Ian also mentioned, recruitment is already under way.

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Throughout that, we have also had open and transparent communication. The backlog banner on the website indicates nine months, but that is because it is taking into account the worst-case scenario, which is an outlier case from January that we have not yet been able to close. In reality, the amount of time that it takes for an assessment is approximately 13 weeks. We are looking at a number of cases now and, with the progress that we have already made in bringing down the backlog numbers, we should be able to clear the backlog within four to six months.

Thank you very much, and thank you for all the hard work that you are doing to bring this process back into the required timeframe.

Good morning. Two key things came out in the section 22 report that was issued. One was that

“key relationships with other public bodies have broken down”,

which you have touched on. The other key thing was that the Auditor General concluded that the ethical standards commissioner’s office was “neither open nor transparent”. Can you talk a bit more about those two issues and go into a bit more detail?

Yes. I will talk briefly about stakeholder engagement, but Karen Elder is wholly across corporate services as well as governance so I will bring her in next. Karen is the one who keeps our website regularly updated. That is relevant in relation to openness and transparency—information about how we are doing against the recommendations is published online so that everyone is aware of precisely where we are in relation to those recommendations.

On stakeholder engagement, one of the first things that I did was to try to rebuild bridges with all our stakeholder organisations. As soon as I took up post, I was in touch with the Standards Commission, which is clearly a key stakeholder and where the relationship had broken down completely. I was also in touch with the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities, SOLAR, the Society of Local Authority Chief Executives and Senior Managers and Scottish ministers—you name it.

We have a long list of important stakeholders and it was important that I was in touch with them quickly. It was not just to say, “How are you doing?” and to let them know that I was now in post. It was to say, “I understand that our office has significant issues that you will have concerns about; this is an opportunity for you to articulate those concerns, for you to help me to understand what we need to do to improve, and for me to give you commitments to improving in all those areas.”

Trust does not come automatically. I made it clear that I did not expect them to trust me from day 1, as they would need to see actions on top of words. I explained that I would maintain regular contact with them and that, if they needed to get in touch, they would always be pushing on an open door. I think that everyone, from all our stakeholder groups, knows that all they need to do is to pick up the phone if they have any concerns or questions about how we are operating and I will have a chat with them about how we are getting on and what we can do to fix any concerns that they may have.

Karen can give some specifics on our transparency.

Good morning, everyone.

When releasing the section 22 report on our 2020-21 audit, the Auditor General noted that there was

“an absence of openness and transparency”

in the organisation. Since then, we have undertaken a range of activities to become a more open and transparent organisation.

Foremost was the development of a new strategic plan. That began in April 2021, when Ian Bruce was appointed as acting commissioner. The plan clearly set out the values that we would work to. It was the subject of a full public consultation before being laid before Parliament in October 2021.

We carried out a full review of our complaint-handling statistics and published the results in our annual report and accounts for 2020-21. We also publish detailed formal minutes of our monthly senior management team meetings; our business plan and our progress against it; and, as Ian Bruce has mentioned, our progress against the auditor’s recommendations. We have consulted both formally and informally on the investigations manual, and the full public consultation has recently closed. As has been mentioned, in future we plan to publish our reports and decision letters relating to complaints about conduct.

The acting commissioner is open to meeting, and has met, with those who have complained about us. In fact, we have published the outcome of an external investigation into a significant complaint about us. He is also open to meeting, and has met, with any council officer who wishes to talk about the office’s work. Internally, staff input is sought when our business plans are being developed. We have also brought our staff into the process of identifying risks to the business, and we keep up to date with them with regular team and individual meetings.

That is a flavour of where we are with transparency.

That is helpful. I have no further questions at this stage, unless Ian Bruce wants to come in on that point.

I just reiterate the point that I made during my opening statement. I say to every parliamentary committee that I appear before that engagement with them is important. We have few opportunities to talk publicly about our work, so we genuinely appreciate the opportunity. The committee should not hesitate to ask at any time for any information that it would find helpful. If we do not have the information to hand and it requires a bit of research, we are more than happy to do that.

I was previously on the Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee, which you presented to, and that point came across quite clearly. Thank you for that.

Good.

Good morning, and thank you for joining us. Directions to the ethical standards commissioner were issued during 2020-21. Will you explain in more detail what impact those directions have had and talk about their on-going application?

You have already heard from Ms Johnston from the Standards Commission, and as I have said, it was wholly understandable that those directions were issued, as that was done for a very good reason. There is a separation of functions between the two offices, and I think that having those directions in place makes clear what the different functions are. Potentially, we could make that clearer to the public, and I have plans for that. Although the directions have an impact, they provide a great deal of public assurance that what happened previously could not happen again.

There are three sets of directions, and their impact varies. I am being simplistic about this, but the first direction is about keeping everyone up to date, which is something that we would commit to doing anyway—it is written into our manual. Keeping everyone up to date with the progress of an investigation is the right thing to do. No matter whether that direction was in place or not, we would commit to continuing to do that.

The second direction relates to reporting and means that we are reporting to the commission more frequently than prior commissioners would have done. As Ms Johnston explained, final decisions about whether a breach has occurred statutorily are for the commission to make. It cannot make those decisions without a well set out report. It is also probably worth saying that we have agreed with the Standards Commission on the template letters, template reports and fact sheets that go to the members of the public to ensure that we are on the same page and that everyone knows what to expect from the process.

The last direction, which is the eligibility direction, was issued just prior to my immediate predecessor’s departure. That is the one that gives me least leeway in determining whether an investigation should be taken forward, because it requires that, if there could be a breach of the code—except within very narrow circumstances—we must investigate that and report on it. That means that the number of live investigations is higher than it has been been historically. We monitor what we are doing and think that, this year, there will probably be an average of 22 live investigations per month, which is a record level.

The directions have an impact, but it is for the committee and the public to decide whether that is worth it to ensure that we have that level of assurance.

That is helpful. It would be helpful for our oversight role if you could provide us with updates about when plans are being implemented.

Of course.

In your opening statement, you talked about a communication strategy. You may already have covered some of that in your responses to our questions, but this is an opportunity to share more about that. You also mentioned key performance indicators for your office. It would be interesting to hear about both those subjects.

Members will be aware that one of the auditor’s recommendations was that we should have internal audit services, which we tendered for and obtained. The internal auditors made recommendations, having looked at all the work that we do. I may ask Karen Elder to give some detail about our first internal audit. We had the auditors look at three topics. I hope that it will give you more assurance about our work to know that I am not marking my own homework—we have commissioned someone to look at how we are getting on.

The auditors said that, as well as our overall strategy, we should look at a communication strategy. On reflection, we felt that we would like to take forward that recommendation. We, and you, are aware of the work that we do, but I am not sure that the general public is aware of that work or of the difference between the work of our office and that of the Standards Commission.

I already said that proper operation of the ethical standards framework should encourage more people to come into public life, whether as a board member or by standing for elected office. We have a role in educating the public about the framework and where we sit in that. I had a look at my initial plan yesterday. We have a strategic plan. It is important that the public knows what our purpose, objectives and values are. We must communicate all that to the public and our stakeholders and make clear how they can make complaints, so that the whole process is more accessible. Those are my thoughts in that area.

We have two sets of KPIs. They are not entirely distinct, but they are a bit dissimilar. The first and most important set of KPIs for people who are going through the process, either as a complainer or as a respondent, deal with how quickly we get through the process. Those KPIs were all included in the manual for consultation.

The other KPIs relate to our communication strategy, which I mentioned, and our values and objectives. We have set out our stall, which is not only about what we will do but about how we will go about that. That is a bit softer. For many years, I have been running anonymous applicant surveys for the public appointments process, and I am going to adopt something similar. At the end of the process, when we write to complainers and respondents, they will get a link to an anonymous survey and will be asked to tell us about their experience of the process. They will not be identifiable unless they choose to give us information that would identify them.

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There is another thing that I plan to do and on which the committee might have a view. We currently gather demographic data from applicant surveys, and I would like to do the same for complainers and respondents simply because, in Scotland, we do not have a handle on the demographics of local authorities. We can use the census data for comparison, but that additional data would allow us to get a sense of whether, for example, more complaints are made about women councillors. It would be helpful to have data in that area. That is about informing future policy and procedures for us, the Standards Commission and others with an interest.

I will ask Karen Elder to talk briefly about internal audit results.

As Ian Bruce said, we appointed an internal audit function back in spring 2022. The first audit that they carried out for us was in summer last year and it examined our governance arrangements as they stood.

We are pleased that the internal auditors reported that we had substantial controls in place and identified seven good practice points. They had nine recommendations for us. That is above the industry benchmark but they were three medium-level and six low-level recommendations, all of which were tied to the administrative implementation of the recommendations that our external auditor had already made.

The internal auditors also looked at our risk management procedures and concluded that strong controls were in place. They identified seven good practice points and made four low-level recommendations, which were administrative in nature and related to how we set out our risk register.

We also took the opportunity for them to look at the investigation manual that we were developing while it was still in the consultation phase. The auditors noted that substantial controls were in place through that and identified 10 good practice points against industry standards. We were really pleased to see that, and I congratulate Ms Glen and her team on it. One medium-priority and one low-priority recommendation were made on that.

We were pleased to see the progress that was being examined and validated externally through those reports.

Thank you. It is great to hear about the positive direction in your internal audits. I am sure that you are pleased about that.

We have come to the end of our questions, so I thank the witnesses for coming to give evidence. From what I have heard, it seems that they are modelling good leadership in connection with the nine key principles that underpin the standards expected in public life. We all need to model the direction of travel that we need to be going in. That is certainly what I have heard from what the witnesses shared with the committee.

I wish the witnesses well with their recruitment process. We can contact them at any time, but we will see them around this time next year.

Thank you very much for the opportunity.

We agreed at the start of the meeting to take the remainder of our agenda items in private so, as we have no more public business, I close the public part of the meeting.

11:04 Meeting continued in private until 11:20.